From Car Tunes II to World Champion: Dan Herrington's Audio Journey

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Edwin Alvarez (00:20):
Welcome everybody .
This is episode 4 of theSoundCue Garage.
Today we are reconnecting withour legend, Dan Herrington, on
sound quality, competition,builds and audio passion.
Welcome to another episode ofthe SoundCue Garage podcast,
where we dive deep into theworld of automotive sound
quality, one story at a time.

(00:40):
In this episode, I reconnectwith someone I literally haven't
spoken to since the 90s myformer boss and longtime friend,
dan Harrington.
Say hi to the internet world,dan, hello internet world.
So why don't you tell us alittle bit about yourself, dan?

(01:04):
You know, starting way backwhen you were co-owner of
Cartoons 2.
Does that imply that there wasa Cartoons 1

Dan Herrington (01:12):
Yeah, well, I'll go back a little bit.
So you know I grew up inMiddlefield, connecticut.
I went to Vinyl Tech forelectrical and when I graduated
high school I you know I was a Iwas a rambling type.
So I I took off for San Diegowith two toolboxes and and two
suitcases and just to go outthere and see what would happen.

(01:33):
I was out there for about ayear.
I came back and I started a jobactually in San Diego.
I went.
The job that I found after beingthere a month or two was San
Diego Auto Sound.
It was kind of cool because youdrove around Escondido,
encinitas all the way down toNational City and Poway anywhere

(01:56):
in between.
So I got to see the place youknow in a year really well and
we'd go to car dealerships andupgrade stereos.
I remember the, the old five ohMustangs were coming out and
those things were awesome andyou know I did cruise controls
and sunroofs and and um, allthis stuff.
So that's where I got my my, mytoe dunk in the water of car

(02:19):
audio and then came back toConnecticut and I was looking
for a job once I got back and Ifound a job at Cartoons the
original Cartoons.
There were three owners from astore that was on Main Street,
middletown, or just off MainStreet Middletown Fred Locke,

(02:39):
maybe I don't know.
There's a bunch of old names ofnot only car but home audio
stores back then.
And the three guys left thatstore and they started cartoons
and that little, that littleplaza, there were Route 72
diners there in East Berlin andmy wife always corrects me on

(03:00):
that it's Berlin, I think,instead of Berlin and so so I
start working there and, uh,they tried me on a saturday.
They had an installer and, um,you know, I went in there and I
I went at it, you know, back,you know I didn't have the
toolage I needed or it was, youknow, metro was probably just
getting started.
Back then I, I would imagineit's about 1983, I think and, uh

(03:25):
, and I I did a saturday andthey fired the guy and they
hired me.
So, oh, wow, I did that.
Yep, we were there for about ayear, year and a half, and then
we moved over to the um, theplaza behind burger king there
in cromwell on route 72 yeah andum, and that's where.

(03:45):
that's where it really took off.
You know, we did home audio andcar audio Mm-hmm and it really
was awesome.
I mean, we, let's see.
That brings us up to somewherearound 1987.
And Car Audio Nationals alpinesponsored event, um, they did.

(04:09):
You know, local shows.
We had one at our store thereand um, and then if you won
there you went down to thesemi-finals in new york,
somewhere just out, I think itwas long island, um, that
represented the winners on theeast coast and then they shipped
.
I did a, a van for a handicappedguy.

(04:30):
Okay, he had gotten in a carcar accident.
Yeah, rob gurnier was his name,he was a good man, and um, we
did a unique van install there,alpine amps, alpine head unit
and I, I got introduced to roddrivers, so I started doing rod
drivers.
They were Gauss subwoofersthat's a name I haven't heard in

(04:53):
a long time.
I had peerless dual six inchmid-bass Dynaudio D52 mid-range.
I can't believe I'm believingthese or memorizing these.
Uh, these model numbers, um,and then, uh, d 28 Dine Audio
tweeters.
Those were in the back, in thefront, in the front I think I

(05:14):
had Phillips um six inch midbase and Phillips tweeter, yeah,
and and that thing soundedincredible.
It was all active crossover,you know all active back then
sounded yeah, yeah, yeah, thisis, this is early days, you know
.
Yeah, yeah, I mean usually those, uh drivers that you named.

They're still pretty big to this day.
Dyna audio playlist they stillmake.
They still make good stuff no,absolutely.

And uh.
So we ended up, um, uh, winningthe east coast.
So this is 1987, yeah, 87.
And and so they, they shippedthe van out to san diego.
Okay, sea world, you know, paidfor my wife.
Wife came and another guy fromthe store and we're staying in

(06:06):
this awesome hotel in San Diego.
Yeah, and it was like it was atSeaWorld and it was like a
Hollywood event Fireworks andall this stuff going off.

Wow, and that's exciting.

Yeah, yeah, we got second place by one point.

Wow.

And I think I saw that van.

It was a, was it a dark colored van could swear
that van yeah, like a darkmaroon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Iremember, yeah, yeah yeah, that
that, that that van was in morethan one magazine actually, I
don't remember it was early,early magazines.

Really I don't remember magazines when I was
starting out in this thing.
It seemed like the magazinescame, you know, probably in the
later 80s.
I could be wrong abouteverything I say today, but you
know it's a long time ago.
But I remember it was maybe thefirst issue of one of the major
magazines.

Yeah, yeah.
But anyway, I remember when Ifirst met you uh, believe it or
not, you're one of the mainreasons I got into sound quality
in cars you started talkingabout madisound.
Do you remember madisound?
Yeah, that's where I would getmy broad drivers.
Yeah, they're still around tothis day.
But back then they had like acatalog.

(07:20):
You would get a catalog and, uh, you, you told me about morel.
They're like, oh yeah, moreland vifa and all this.
And I'm like what the hell isthis guy talking about?
All I you know, back then Ionly heard about stuff from
crutchfield, like um rightpioneer sony, yeah, alpine, you
know I thought, and here you are, I'm, I'm meeting you for the

(07:40):
first time.
You were always going 100 milesan hour.
I remember that about you.
We had to walk and talk.
You were you.
You.

You were co-owner of cartoons too, but
you were also an installer,correct yeah, so I, you know we
won that in 87 and I worked forcartoons.
We eventually moved out ofcromwell.
The two partners left and andthe one partner moved it over to
uh, on 60, you know, kind ofbehind Monroe Monroe muffler.

(08:11):
Yeah, it was only about 20,2,200 square feet.
It was a small place.

Yeah, I remember that it was a tiny little place.

Yep, and I worked for him for a couple of
years and then, and then I left,I, I just um, it had, you know,
it had its heyday and it waskind of piddling out and you
know there was lack of money andstuff.
I I went to work for soundplayground.
Remember them?

yeah, yeah and uh yep, yeah, I haven't heard
about that place in a long time.
Sound, sound playground.

Yep, yep they did a ton of.
I mean those those five to 50sales were just unbelievable
that people would be lined updown the street about a mile,
yeah.
And then when the doors allsprinting and tripping and it
was, it was wild, but I workedthere for about a year and the
managers of the store maybe noteven a year, but one of the

(09:05):
managers of the store, um, cameto me and said let's start our
own car audio store.
So that Alan I that was AlanYep and a real nice guy, great
guy.
So, um, you know, and that wasthe month he asked me to do,
that was the month that I month,that I became the number one

(09:27):
salesman in the whole companyOut of 250, you know, selling
those warranties.
I'd sell the warranties way upfront in a sale.
People wouldn't even know theywere getting it, I guess.
But anyway, you know, I wastrying to support my family, of
course so yeah, so, uh, we, weget to.
Uh, I call up the owner ofcartoons yeah and bob, and, and

(09:54):
he sells it to me for you know,dirt money to just come in and
take over wow.

So I'm surprised, because car audio was really
starting to get its wind at thatpoint.

He just didn't have the people.
He was trying to mow it alongand you know it needed, you know
, the fresh air of new meat.
So I came in and you know, thefirst year we like tripled what
he was doing.
The second year that doubled.
Then it doubled again.
We were doing over a milliondollars of that, 2200 square

(10:28):
feet wow yeah we paved a parkinglot and back because there was
no room for cars.
You know, yeah, yeah, so.
So now it's about 1993 and uh,and Ray Broduer, I had done a
car for him out of my garagewhen I was working at Sound
Playground and he came in and hewanted to do a killer system.

(10:51):
Yeah, so I said to him, hebought a brand new 93 Honda
four-door, yep.
So I said to him you know, whydon't we?
You know, why don't we?
You know, initially want tospend probably 10 to 15 grand,
if I remember right.
I said why don't we do?
I ask a competition and he saysall right, I'll work overtime.

(11:18):
The guy worked nothing butovertime for like 80 hours a
week right to pay for it.
Overtime for like, yeah, yeah,it's like 80 hours a week right
to pay for it.
Yeah, and I start doing thatjob.
But the business is growinglike exponentially, so I'm
trying to do the business, getout before midnight and you know
, and do this big car.
Yeah, you know, without thefacility that you would really

(11:39):
want to do this thing, so itdragged out for two years, but I
I didn't compromise on anyaspect of that car as I was
working on it.
I would just make everybodywait, if that's what it took to
do it.

Well, the main reason in my mind it took so
long was because Ray insisted,or did you insist, that only you
work on it, and is that?

he was.
He was very patient with mebecause you know, no, I wanted
to be the one doing the work onit you know I'd have.
I'd have tidbits of the jobworked on by other people.

You know, here, do this for me, do that for me,
but I I'd say 99 of the car Idid yeah, I remember and um, and
that car, sounded in it, butfantastic I remember, uh, so I
remember I know it went througha couple iterations because when
, when you were building it, Iremember you had kef uniq's in

(12:37):
the kick panels, but didn't wekeep, didn't the uniq's keep
blowing, and then you pivoted tothe dyna audios um if I
remember it's been so long.

I don't remember that yeah, I used to use kef
unicues once in a while, but Idon't remember that.
I mean it could be true.
You know I am 62 years old.
Yeah, because I remember youhad the kef.

That's how how I was in when I heard it.
I was getting my Civic workedon as well.

That's right.
I remember you had a Civic.

Yeah, I had the purple Civic that had several
systems.
And then I worked for you for alittle while.
I don't know if you rememberthat.
Remember that I accidentallycrashed that kid's car.
I backed up and I crushed thekid's door.

No, I don't remember this.

You don't remember that?
No, well, when I first startedworking for you, you had me
doing like little things, likepicking up around the store and
you know organizing things.
And then you started to trustme with small jobs like deck and
two, deck and four.
I think I did a few alarms Istarted to do, you know, yeah,

(13:51):
but one day I was ready to getinto it.
Yeah, oh God, I was that peskykid.
I don't know if you remember.
When you first met me, I was 17years old.
I literally lived 45 minutesaway, but I was at your shop
like once or twice a weekscoping out stuff.

Yeah, yeah, no, I remember that haggling with
you for prices and and.

And I remember you telling me this guy
memorizes all the prices.
I'd come in with the uh caraudio and electronics.
I called it the bible because Ihad all the prices in there.
And uh, me and you would justgo back and forth haggling on
the prices and uh, so one day I,I think I told you I want to
work there and you're like, youjust want to work here for the

(14:31):
employee discount yeah, did Isay that, that's funny yeah,
yeah.
Well, you were joking, but I waslike well, yeah, it would.
But I remember when I wasworking there, even when I
clocked out, I still hung around, I hung around, I, I was I
loved it.
Was this at the coven or was itup um behind monroe muffler on
no, I worked on uh when weworked at the uh at the coven

(14:54):
drive, at the uh old searsbuilding yeah, yeah, yeah, that
was a great building, oh manyeah, you guys.
Yeah, that place was.
It's funny, if you want, if youwant to go into that, how you
guys went from 2,200 square feetto what?
20,000 square feet.
Why don't you talk about that?

So we're like you know.
I mean the business is doublingevery year.
And when you're doubling yourbusiness every year, it is
stressful.
I was so stressed out I had atthat time probably five kids,
four or five kids, you know, andI have nine now and um you know
we uh, the oldest.

(15:39):
The oldest is 18.
No, the oldest is, I'm sorry.
The oldest is 40 and theyoungest in September, and the
youngest is 18.
Oh, wow, and uh, it's out ofthe house this year.
So my wife and I are looking ateach other, going, okay, it's
time for us now, and uh, I don'tthink we know what to do with
ourselves.
So, so we, we were just man, itwas rocking.
You just couldn't, we didn'tadvertise, you didn't have to.

(16:00):
We did this little cablecommercial one time, real spoofy
and goofy, and it was fun,funny.
I had a video.
I probably still have thevideotape of it.
It was great.
But you know, we put it out oncable but we really didn't need
it.
We were doing cell phonesalarms as fast as we could get
the cars out, you know carphones remember the car phones
go home.

You guys had a car phone section too.

Remember that we got, yeah, when we went down at
the Coven.
So I'd say probably in 96 or 97, you know, sears had moved out
of that automotive right on thehighway.
You couldn't make any of a moreperfect scenario for a shop.

(16:43):
Make it any of a more perfectscenario for a shop.
Matter of fact, there's stillum a shop there now that does
you know leather seats and moonroofs and all kinds of.
They do a great job.
They're really good businessmen, those guys really good well,
it's a perfect location.
It's a perfect location it isyeah, yeah, yeah.
You throw a banner up and thewhole world sees it driving down
home, you know, into thosetowns all below and stuff.

(17:04):
So so we moved down there, um,in the winter, it's probably 96.
No, no more.
Yeah, probably 96.
And that's where I finishedBroder's car Um, staying late
every night, you know it justdidn't end.
You know, trying to get out ofthere at a reasonable hour to be

(17:26):
with the family.
That was.
That was a tough part of that.
You know you take people's keys, you want to deliver you know,
always had urgency to to givecustomer service to the max.
you know, Yep, and there's asacrifice to that.
You sacrifice your own life.

Of course.

So I'd probably do it again, do it again if I
had to do it again.
I loved my customers.
I had such faithful customers.
It was wild.
They would come from way out ofstate.
We had people coming up out ofNew Jersey, new Hampshire,
massachusetts.
They'd take that drive.
I just wanted to make sure theywere hooked up.
I remember At one point there Iget done with broder's car and

(18:10):
you know we win the world finalsand I mean that car was special
, it just was, you know.
So it was done with noknowledge of what the rest of
the industry was doing.
Everything was kind of unique,I remember.

I remember that car actually had some really
unique things.
Like you had these groundstraps made out of copper and
sonics on the roof right sonicsliner or something along those
lines and you had.

You remember that?

huh, I remember all that because I it was so
different that I was like, wow,and why don't you tell people
about some of the uniquefeatures of that car that got
you the winning?

formula when I was driving down the road.
I'm thinking about this stuff.
I'm laying in bed at night, I'mthinking.
I wake up in the morning, firstthought in my mind is
overcoming the physics.
Overcoming the physics, youknow, you're trying to create a
30 foot wide soundstage, 30 feetdeep.
You know, and and imaging.
You know, when you're sittingoff to one side all these things

(19:13):
in a in a car, right, that'sall glass, reflective glass
around you, and and andresonating surfaces.
You know.
So I'd always try to work allthat out in my head.
You know, on the best way to doeach thing.
So I mean the grounding.
You brought up um, I had a nextdoor neighbor that was a
Motorola guy, real deep Motorolaguy's whole career.

(19:35):
You know two way radios and allthat.
And he says why are you usinground ground?
I go what do you mean?
You know everybody uses roundground.
No, he says round ground haseddy currents running around the
surface, the skin effect on awire, and he says it acts like a
transmitter.
If we tried to ground a trunkthat had an antenna for a

(19:57):
two-way radio, it wouldn't workwith round ground.
So he says you get, you got todo flat.
I said really Okay.
So I looked into that back then.
There's no internet but I don'tremember where I got my
information from, but I I readon that and stuff, and and so I
took copper flashing.
I calculated the thickness ofthe copper and how wide it would

(20:19):
need to be to equal the sizewire I was shooting at, and um,
and then I laminated it likeyour driver's license is
laminated.
Yep, I ran it through it.
I ran it through a laminator.
My buddy's father was buildingthese laminators.
Can I borrow one?
So?
So I, so I insulated it, youknow, with laminate, and and

(20:40):
then laid it flat.
I mean, think about how it runsunder the carpet.
You know, you don't even knowit's there, yeah, it's flat, and
if you got to take a corner youfold it over, you know, go
another direction and then.
So everything's grounded withflat conductor.
And then I went to the.
I brought everything down tothe center ground plane of the

(21:00):
vehicle, the central point, youknow, probably under the console
.
So all grounds come back to onepoint on the ground plane of
the vehicle.
And then I ran a static strapto the road so you ever get in
your car and you get snapped bythe door, you know, on your arm.
Yeah, static electricity.

(21:22):
So okay, let's get rid ofstatic electricity.
So when he drives around, theentire car is being grounded at
all times with the ground strap,right.
So that was that was, uh, youknow, and everything you're
doing in a car like that ifyou're going after I ask it is
you're thinking, you know,international auto sound
challenge association.
You're thinking about how can Iscore points beyond the norm,

(21:46):
you know, yeah, so you're alwaystrying to come up, like in the,
with the power wire at thebattery.
So I had one of those big busfuses, you know, with the clear
cover, and so what I did is I Idrilled through the phenolic or
whatever the material is aroundthe fuse.
I drilled through it and I rana little thin piece of flexible

(22:06):
wire around the fuse filamentand then put a, a red handle,
which was an emergency pull.
So if you had like a problem,you know you're not going to
tool take the fuse out, you know, disconnect the battery.
So you, you just go in thereand you, you grab this little
red loop and pull it and it'llrip the fuse in half.

(22:28):
Wow, so you know that gainspoints, right, yep, and then,
like you said, the Sonex foam.
I created a grill that flushedinto the ceiling of the back
seat and did Sonex know foamabsorption foam?
That's incredible.

(22:51):
And then I made the, uh, theback of the of the fold down
seats, the rear seat, I made itcompletely grill.
There's a great company outthere, uh, called mcnicholson
company.
If any of these car audio guyshaven't found them yet, they're
out of, I think, new Jersey.
They sell all kinds ofdifferent great grid.

(23:11):
You know anything you want.
It's like great stuff, you cando it.
Stainless steel, any kind ofmaterial you want.
And so I made the whole backseat completely breathable.
And then I did the same thingwith the rear deck Cut it all
out, forget if, weld it in maybe, um, you know some grill

(23:31):
material thick, you know grillmaterial, yeah, um, to make to
make the car breathable fromtrunk to the front of the
vehicle.
And then, of course, uh, youknow the obvious would be the,
the dynamat.
You know it's probably twolayered or whatever.
And then, and then, um, then thesubwoofer enclosure was this

(23:54):
you can see it in the picturesor the magazine article.
It's a, you know, stop signshaped box and machined up you
know a stand for it out ofaluminum, and I went to the
junkyard and I got a power seatmotor out of a Tempo Ford Tempo,
yeah and then rigged that sothat and then packed it in sound

(24:21):
.
I forget how I did it, but Ipacked it like under the vehicle
so you wouldn't hear the motor.
So it was like a silentmotorization where you can face
the woofers forward, face themup off the glass, face them to
the rear for a bump, right, yeah, so you can change the
positioning of your subwoofersfiring to change the sound.

(24:43):
Yeah, I had a control up frontwhere you can.
I mean, when you were listeningto that and moving that back
and forth, total difference,even by inches, you know, oh,
yeah, I imagine it made a hugedifference and a fun fact too.

I that box.
I was so intrigued by that boxthat your woodworking guy
because you used to have a guyup the street make the boxes for
you and he made a replica,another one not as intricate.
You had your woofers recessed alittle bit, but the guy made

(25:19):
the same exact box for my car,for my Civic, but mine wasn't
motorized.

Who's the guy that was making the boxes?

he was up the street.
I remember you sent me to um, Idon't remember his name, but I
remember when, when I said Iwant that box, when I saw Ray's
box and you called them up andyou said, hey, can you make
another one?
But instead you made the frontflat instead of the woofer, sort
of uh, recessed a little bit,if I remember correctly.

I used to make a lot of boxes.
I don't really remember this.
There was some guy that I hadmaking boxes for me.
There was a guy, Steve, over in.

East Hampton.
He was on Route 66.
The guy that I picked up thebox from you called him up and
he was like a woodworking guy.
I went over there and I pickedit up from my civic.
Yeah, because I remember I'mnot I'm not pulling this up.
Yeah, yeah, it was so long agoI mean we're talking almost 30,

(26:14):
40 years ago.
But uh, the guy, the guy was onroute 66 and you, I remember
you calling him and you said youwanted another box and it had
the same cubic airspace as Ray's, but it was, it was, it was
flat in the front but it wouldstop.

I must've been.
I must've been too busy, causeI'm still spitting up MDF at
this point all these years later.
Well, this was at the Covendrive.

Were you making boxes at the Coven drive I?

don't remember, yeah, yeah, we had that little
wood shop out back, oh, tons ofthem.
Yeah, we were making them everyday.
Oh, okay, they're torturous.
Yeah, yeah, routers and yeahand uh, you know, you know, what
was a fun thing back back atthe coven is we found this paper
company that this guy worked atand I'd give him 50 bucks a

(27:03):
piece for these tubes.
They were about probably 12inch inside diameter, 12 inches
in diameter and and they wouldcome really long.
I can cut them any any.
You know, I remember figuringout how to do a your, your
volume on a cylinder.
You know, yeah, I think it wastwo times pi R squared or
something.
So you know, I I'd be able tojust cut these things at a

(27:26):
certain length, and they camewith like inch and a half thick
particle board end caps.
So you just have to cut themout, glue them, shoot them, cut
them out and then think how easyit is to do a cylinder with
carpet, right, yeah, yeah.

Just roll the carpet on it.

I remember those .
Yeah, we sold a million ofthose things.
They sounded great.

Yeah, because the bass tubes were popular back
then.

The the bazookas yeah if, if you don't have
bazookas.

You, you, you.
You were going to go out ofbusiness because those things
were so popular back then.
But I remember the the, thetubes that you're talking about.
There was a whole bunch in theback and I was like what the
heck are they doing?

then, you guys, were making some paper company.
I give the guy he'd bring himby, his car was loaded with him.
He'd bring him by, drop him off.
I give him 50 bucks a piece.

There's no way to make an enclosure quick and
down and dirty, you know yeah,yeah, hey, if it works, it works
, and if it sounds good, youcan't complain.
You know that's it.
So you guys went back from back.
Oh, go ahead sorry, let's go.
Let's finish broder's car here,because there's a couple of
cool things yeah, that's what Iwas going to ask about is how
did you guys pivot fromfinishing the car to then, um,

(28:35):
going to ayaska, like what, what?

uh, because that's well, as it's coming
together to go to comingtogether.

yeah, as it's coming together, yeah, yeah.

And as it's coming together, we just know
okay, this is special, so youknow, and the psych heightened,
you know, and he's working moreand more overtime hours to pay
for it and I'm staying later andlater at night, you know, as
I've had to think for like ayear and a half, two years or
whatever it was, yep two yearsor whatever it was.
Yep.
So the, the tweeters.

(29:05):
I took the Dine Audio D28tweeter which was just such a
smooth, soft dome.
It was just such a greattweeter, high end, you know they
were.
Back then they were probably acouple hundred bucks a piece or
whatever, and that was a lotright.
So I, uh, I went over to amachinist in portland, this old

(29:25):
guy, and I said, would you shavedown the flanges on these
tweeters?
You know to the size of themagnet.
And he did that for me.
And then I went and I found, um, you know, like the eyeball
lights grandpa has in front ofhis fireplace, you know, you can
, you can face the lightinganywhere you want.
You know it's like a ball.
You know, in the, in the, inthe frame, and um, and I

(29:50):
machined those down so that theywere as small as they could be.
And then, because I wanted mytweeters to be adjustable, I
wanted as much to be adjustablein there.
You know we have the base isadjustable, right, I want
something to work with when itcomes time to tweak.
Okay, cause you know you coulddo a great job on a car, get all
the way to the end, and it'slike man, I'm struggling to get

(30:12):
image in here.
You know, yeah, and and um, youknow it's phase balance
placement right.
So so I've got my tweeters thatI can rotate on the dash and,
by the way, I made kitty hairfiberglass mounts that made them
look like they're supposed tobe there up on top of the dash.

(30:32):
And then I ordered from Japanthe factory dash leather, vinyl
or whatever it was on thedashboard, so it matched
perfectly right on the dashboard.
So it matched perfectly rightso you could rotate the tweeters
to splash those off the glassat different angles.
Boy, it gives you something towork with.
You know you play around causeand effect and you know it takes

(30:56):
hours and hours and hours andhours of playing with it until
you get it where you think itshould be with it, until you get
it where you think it should be.
So, um, and then I did the, the, the dine audio.
Um, I think it's a seven inchmid-range in the kick panels and
that's a, that's a fullfiberglass enclosure in there,
pour water in to measure thevolume, so it's they're both

(31:20):
exactly the same.
And then, um, in the, in thedoors of that Honda.
Um, you know, with the limitedspace, and I, you know I'm
trying to make this thing looklike you get in the car and you
can't tell there's a stereo init.
You know, when the seats up,and you know, you, I want it to
look as factory, factory aspossible, which was also a

(31:40):
scoring thing, you know, backthen.
And and so I, so I madeenclosures that go and take up
all the air volume I can inthere to get to the right air
volume.
And I did five-inch cliffdesign, which I think they were
just, you know, painting Vifadrivers red, you know, but cliff
designs I always liked them.

They sounded good .
That's when they first came out, I remember.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that was a good set of components there.

You know, yeah, a little cheesy looking, but
they sounded great, I did notknow that they were.

They may have been vifa rebranded.
You would know better than Iwould on that.

If you held it, if you held the vifa next to it
like a five inch mid-base driverand you hold it next to it, it
looked exactly the same that'sfunny so yeah, yeah, a lot of
the companies do that.

Oh yeah, they do that to this day.
A lot of companies do thatalpine used to do that a lot.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel, just make
the crossover unique and right.
You know there you go.

So no, the crossover is everything you go.

So no, the crossovers, everything you know.
So, um, so that was themid-base, and then this was to
this day I go.
How did I pull this off?
I put under the seats.
Remember how big the macintoshamps were oh, they were 100,
yeah yep, four by 50.
So I got, I got four by 50 formy, my tweeters and and two

(33:04):
channels in the back for youknow the ambient fill coming
from the back, yeah, and thenwhich, which didn't really play
too much of a role, I just would, I'd play with phase on them
and stuff and see if I can, youknow, create a bigger image and
everything.
But those were, that was a fourby 50.
The four by 100 was for themid-base and the mid-range and

(33:29):
those mac amps were monsters andI got them under the seat of
that 93 honda yeah, they arereal big I remember the seat
would just miss.
The thing never scraped.
Yeah, no, you don't want toscratch those bad boys.

Those are.
They were expensive then.
They're still expensive now.
People, people love those amps.
Those are uh oh, they're highlyregarding, oh yeah, well, not
brand new, but on the usedmarket they're very coveted.
They're still, to this day, oneof the cleanest amps that you
can buy.

You know what one of the secrets was.
What's that?
I keep interrupting you?

No, not at all.

I'm so excited to talk about something I
haven't talked about in 30 years.
I'm excited for you.
So I had to do this 85-footcarbon fiber racing yacht.
It was like the family thatinvented cable TV.

(34:30):
Right, and they they would goaround the world.
They had a crew in the boat thatwould bring it on, you know, to
Italy and then down to Antiguaand it's all over the place and
they would do this maxi class ofracing on sailboats.
They're 85 foot big, right, andthis guy really wanted awesome
sound.
So they, they sought me out,they came up with the, the boat

(34:53):
engineer and the captain and allthese people we met back and
forth and it had to do aboutweight, right.
So you had to bring everythingdown to the lowest possible
weight, right, and so I wantedto use the Macintosh amps, you
know, and get rid of all theweight to them and the size and,
you know, put the circuit andfigure out how to do heat

(35:16):
dissipation and so forth, youknow, in a boat, right?
So, with taking that apart andanalyzing it, the tracers are
about the size of a hair in thatthing on the circuit board.
Yeah, right, where you, you know, I was used to seeing all these
amps, orion and ppi and allthese you know great big tracers

(35:36):
on the board, but that wastheir secret to making it sound
good it's the small tracers.
That.
That's what the engineer atMacintosh told me.
Oh wow, and yeah, that was backthen.

That's good to know.
I know they're big in the homeaudio scene still to this day,
but as far as car audio I thinkthey're doing a collaboration
with Jeep.
They're doing this huge thingwith Jeep.
I haven't, you know, I've seenit advertised.
I've seen pictures doing thishuge thing with jeep.
I I haven't, you know, I'veseen it advertised, I've seen
pictures.
But as far as, like you know,regular people, like civilians,
like us, we can't buy thosemacintosh amps or or anything

(36:12):
macintosh audio, car relatedanyway, unless it's used stuff,
you know from the 90s, which,like I said, it's still good
stuff and it still sells for apretty premium because those are
, you know, they've beenmeasured as one of the cleanest
amps out on the market.

So that's why I chose them for that job, because
of all the amps that I'd playedwith through the years.
To me that was you know, I'mnot just looking to slam, you
know, I'm going for soundquality.
Oh, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, and that that mac at that time
was the best that that I knewof.
So that's why I went with them.
And then, but for the bass, Iwent with rockford.

(36:50):
I think I had a rockford 400.
Yeah, for the subwoofers.
For the subwoofers, yeah,because you know, rockford's
bass was always great yeah, yeah, they were powerful amps back
then.

They're still powerful amps even now.
I know a lot of people.
There's some people that have,um, a passion for the old school
.
There's even an old schoolstereo web channel, old school
stereo uh, facebook page andstuff like that.
And there's a lot of collectors.
You know the end caps on therockford fosgate amps yeah,
those are for money.
They sell for money they sellfor.

(37:23):
I had a bunch of RockfordFosgate amps.
The end caps alone sell foralmost $150.

Because that's the first thing people lose.
I saw that recently, yeah.

I remember that you were a pack rat.
I remember Alan goofing on youbecause you wouldn't throw
anything away.
And, ironically, one time I wastrying to buy a ppi amp from
you and I said I don't have themoney.
I said I'm gonna put it onlayaway, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
like.
Remember we had like thislayaway thing back then and um,

(37:57):
and I said I got this sony ampthat my brother wants.
He wants to buy it, but I can'tlive without music for a week.
And you're like well, here I'llgive you this amp.
And you went in the back andyou dug around in this big pile
of what looked like junk to meand you freaking rip out.

I used, I used all of it, brother.

I used all of it.
You whip, you rip out this likepunch 150 or punch 75 rockford.
That was one of the I think itwas probably the second one made
you know from from rock forfosgate.
I had never heard a rock forfosgate before this.
This is, this is all your fault, man.
This audio, sound quality,audio thing that I've sound

(38:37):
quality addiction that I've hadsince the 90s, is all due to you
, brother.
So you give me this RockfordFosgate amp.
I rip out the Sony amp, I sellit to my brother.
I'm like what's this RockfordFosgate?
I put it in my car and itfreaking blows me away.
I'm like what?
How could this thing run myentire system?

(38:58):
Because remember that you coulddo mix mono with the Rockford
amps.

Oh yeah, and I was just blown away.

This thing was running my subwoofer, my two
back speakers, my Morelseparates in the front and then
I had kicker mid-ranges in thedash and the Rockford was
running it.
It would get hot like crazy butit wouldn't distort and it
would play it cleanly.
I was blown away.
I was blown away.

A lot of guys back then got heavy into passive
crossover networks and wouldjust take one amp and build the
whole system around it, justplaying with the passive
crossovers to get everythingdialed in.
Yeah, you know, and yeah, noquestion, those are.
You know, I don't know anythingabout the new stuff.
That's the thing.

(39:43):
You know.
I follow the group you justspoke.
I, you know I don't knowanything about the new stuff.
That's the thing I.
You know, I follow the groupyou just spoke of.
You know I follow differentgroups and I don't say anything
because they're talking aboutbrands and they're doing stuff.
I, you know.
I know, I know DSP sounds likeit's a big deal now, right?
Yep, which, oh, let me tell youthis.
So the rep for Clarion, which Ialways had a lot of respect for

(40:08):
clarion they always soundedgreat.
You know I was alpine guy,mainly in eclipse, right, but
but clarion, always you gottarespect the way they sounded.
They were good, yeah, and youknow they'd look a little
different.
You know alpine and eclipsejust had a little higher end
look and stuff in the dash.
But so the Clarion rep comes inand he sells me and Broder last

(40:30):
minute, I'd say six monthsbefore showtime.
I don't know the model number.
I tried to search it online.
There's probably very fewpeople that even know about this
piece.
But if you look in the picturesof the car in the back left
where I made that cover over it,that's a digital analog
converter with a fiber optic.

(40:51):
This is 1996.

Yeah, so this was ahead of its time.

With that head unit you can do time alignment
of every speaker.
With memory you can dodifferent positionings and
memorize it.
Time alignment of every speaker, you know, with memory you can
do different positionings andmemorize it time.
Time alignment of every speaker, huge, huge.
When you're tweaking a system,give me that, and if you don't
give me anything else, I'll livewith that.
Right then it's got parametriceq, graphic eq.

(41:20):
Um, oh, what else was in thatthing?
But this is all way ahead ofits time.
The crossover only made.

What's that?
The crossovers, I imagine,right, crossover, oh yeah yeah,
full crossovers.

I think you could do from butterworth to to
language.
Riley, you can do different 24db.
Yeah, no, it had all kinds ofdifferent 6 db, 12 db, 24 d, 18
and 24 db per octave slopes.
Wow right, this was all likelike way ahead of its time this

(41:54):
was like high-end pro gear orsomething mentality, and they
only.
I found out last year who.
Who told me this, I can'tremember.
Last year, I found out thatClarion only sold six of those
units.
Wow, they were $6,500 cost.

Well, that might be the main.
Well, think about it, that wasthe 90s right.
Imagine what $6,500 would benow.
Double that, that would be likea $13,000 head unit yeah, yeah.
So I mean, even now, that's alot of money if you, if somebody
said, hey, I want 6,500 bucksfor a head unit, but I mean it

(42:37):
was a head unit dsp crossover it.
It ticked a lot of boxes.

It was a monster , thing was a monster so that
was.

That was basically what you used to tune
the car the that, that clarionunit that was the head unit in
the car.

And so, um, I mean, think about you know I, I
worked on it for hundreds ofhours because, you know I, I
like to poke the edges, push itin every direction, get, get so
used to what it is doing thatyou can really dial in and play.
I played the same five songs.
You know real hard to makesound good vocal out of that.

(43:15):
I Ask a Disc there.
Yep, I don't remember whattrack it was.
And then you know sine wavesweeps and and the drums, the
seven drums across the stage.
Yeah, to hear where yourimaging is laying in.
You know if it's even or ifit's biased to one side or not.
And I, I spent I don't know ifI was to guess a couple hundred

(43:39):
hours toying with that and, um,dialing it in.
We showed up at oh real, beforeI go into that.
So the CD changer now, remember,I'm trying to keep this thing
wide open, so it's like a usablecar.
You can put stuff in your trunk.
I mean I didn't take up toomuch room overall in the whole

(44:00):
thing.
And so I mounted the cd changersix disc into the bumper.
I created a fiberglassenclosure around it so it's
living outside in the bumper.
So when you open the trunk it'sflush to the rear wall of the
trunk.
That's how you put your disc in.
Even if you have a bunch ofcrap in the in the, you can

(44:23):
still put your disc in there.

So you found room in there.
There's like a little hollowspace in there.

Yeah, the bumper was like hollow.
Yeah, the bumper, you got thisdistance until it meets the car
and so, yeah, I carved that outand did an enclosure so it
wouldn't, you know, bepenetrated by weather and dirt
and everything.

Yeah.

And you know that was kind of a neat.
Oh, and the floor mats.
You know you can't tell fromthe pictures but that was pretty
cool.
So I machined down some plexi.
It was probably a half-inchplexi.
I machined it down and what yousee is maybe an inch by six

(45:07):
inches.
You know, coming through thefloor mat.
Those are custom floor matsthat I made complete.
I got the factory material andsewed it and everything.
So, um, what I did is I thatpiece of plexi is actually like
four inches by six inches andthen I I cut a, a channel

(45:27):
through it to put a neon tubeand then I etched in the words
driver's side says Honda,passenger side says Accord EX
and then put a mirror backing onit.
So when you, when you see Honda, it goes Honda, honda, honda,
honda, honda.
You know down about 20 times.
Yeah, you know glowing in blueneon when you open the door,

(45:50):
just a little, you know sexything to throw in there A little
added beauty.
Touch, right, everybody lovedthat, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.
Well, with Ayaska you had tohave little things like that to
get extra creativity points.
I know that you'd be surprisedhow different Ayasca is now,
because this car oh, they stillhave it.
Was it a two-seat tune?
Yeah, ayasca is still around,but they're not as strict.
The rules are completelydifferent compared to the 90s.

(46:19):
I know in the 90s cars theywould check the car bumper to
bumper, make sure that the fusewas x amount of inches away and
it's it's.
Yeah, they're not as strict,you know, because it obviously
everything kind of went downwith with, uh, the car audio
thing.
I, I think, um yeah uh, I don'tknow the direct reason why it

(46:42):
died down, but I woulddefinitely say that 90s was the
heyday, the golden era of caraudio.
It's coming back.
That's why I made this podcast,soundcube Garage.
There's a resurrection coming.

There's a lot more people at the get-togethers
, it does seem like that.
Yeah, people are getting intothis again.

Yeah, they are, and it's mostly sound quality
based, which is really nicebecause there's a lot of cars
that were that were spl cars.
But um, like I was saying, with, with, with raise a chord.
You know you had to havecreativity, points like that.
What you told me about thebattery, that's something that
like tesla has.
That's incredible that you wereway ahead of your time with the

(47:23):
fuse, the thing to pull it,because I know the Tesla
automobiles have that for thefiremen in case there's an
accident, or something like that.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, there's like a ring thatyou pull and it disconnects the
battery.
But, that would be incredibleto do now.
That's a really good idea.
I'm going to steal your idea,Dan.

I'm looking for a royalty on that actually
that's great.

So you guys get into ayaska and are you going
with ray to the ayaskacompetitions?

because yeah, we're in, we're in greenville,
um, we, we get in the car at myhouse, we leave my house at
night, we're gonna drive throughthe night and get to greenville
, south carolina, the finals.
So so ray, you know, has thisbright idea that he's gonna,
he's driving, he's gonna drink abunch of coffee.

(48:13):
So he has like three largecoffees.
He gets, he gets, he gets, uh,caffeine pills at the at the gas
station.
Oh, my god, he's taking thesecaffeine pills.
And when he hears this he'sgoing to laugh.
You know, because we're abouthalfway down there and I'm
sleeping in the passenger seat.
I wake up and we're doing like35 miles an hour on 95.
And I go, right, what are wedoing?

(48:35):
And he's geeking out.
He had like a caffeine trip,you know it was crazy, so racing
colors.
I love Ray so much.

He was such a you could yeah, he was a better
customer.

Yeah, ray was a character, but yeah, his heart
is gold.

This guy is awesome and you told me he still
has the car to this day, right?

yeah, I'm gonna tell you about that at the end.
There's a little little twistin the last week here.
I'll tell you about that at theend.

There's a little little twist in the last week
here.

I'll tell you about that.
So we get down to the, we getdown to the finals and um, I've
got bronchitis and and we're,and you know, we're meeting all
these cool people.
Mike Mineo from New York, hewas cool and, and, you know,
knowledgeable and and um, I'veheard his name through the years
, I actually I just heard it, uh, recently for the first time,

(49:27):
probably 30 years, but you know,he was a big, heavy hitter down
in New York and stuff, and sowe're up against a car from
Canada, a car from Australia anda car from China.
Oh, wow, you know, obviouslythey shipped, shipped them over
for the finals, okay, and um, Imean, we won this thing, those
over for the finals, okay, andum, I mean we won this thing.
Those guys were so mad, oh, theywere so upset, I felt bad, I

(49:49):
was gonna hand them the trophyhere, um, but uh, they, you know
, back then they judged prettygood, I, you know, probably
depended what line you were in,but we got, we got, we got
judged critically, you know, andand we took first place in both
, um, you know, sound qualityand then sound quality plus, I

(50:09):
think it was called, which wasSPL also and um and uh, we took
first in both categories and itwas exciting and on the ride
back so we got to.
You know I say 18 hours, but itcouldn't be that much.
Right?

it's probably georgia you said yeah, maybe
yeah, no, that's about 18 ifyou're, if you're driving
straight through yeah, southcarolina so 16 18 yeah, yeah,
you know having to pee and stuffand probably was 18.

So on the on the ride, back in the excitement, I
I get inspired.
And here's a weird thing I Ihad been obsessed with car audio
.
It's like all I thought aboutit's you know, I sacrificed my
family over over it, over andover and over, which you know, I

(50:57):
regret in a way, and I don't Ibut um, after winning that, I
just, I don't know, I lostinterest in it, you lost
interest, but I know I was likeI didn't lose interest in it,
just I.
I I just didn't want the fightanymore or something.

(51:20):
I don't know.
I never really worked that outin my head, but but I know that
on the ride back I got inspiredfor the ultimate home speaker,
yeah, okay.
So I took some of what I did inthat car, actually like the
adjustability of the tweeters,adjustability of the subwoofer.
So that's where my mind wasright, giving you something you

(51:41):
can tweak and make it better.
So so I wrote out a four pagereport and with diagrams and
everything.
I came home I didn't have acomputer, you know, I probably
didn't get one until 99, I think.
So I came home, I went to mybuddy's house, I had a computer
and I had him write me a fullfour page report on all the

(52:01):
details of of what I ended upcalling proclaim speakers.

Okay, and this was about 99.

you said yeah, that was the original idea.
I put it in paper, didn't doanything with it for about three
years.
Great idea, you know, I meanwhat, what?
What it takes to bringsomething like a good idea to
fruition is is a lot of work,you know, and a lot of money.

(52:34):
And you know I'm trying tosupport my family so I'm not
able to put into it what I havein my head.
So, um, I meet, you know I'mdoing home theater at this time.
I go into doing home theaters,electrician home theaters, I'm
I'm just like going from onehouse to the next whole house,
audio and and uh, building outfull rooms.

(52:57):
You know upholstery, you knowI'm getting into it.
So that's my next thing I'm onto.
So I meet this customer that Ido this big job for out of
Connecticut and and he's got alot of money and and he wants to
invest in something.

(53:17):
So meanwhile I've been workingon a prototype for four years in
my basement, right.
So I take the prototype over tohis basement one night with
another guy that wants to invest.
You know, this other guy justhappened to be doing this half
million dollar millwork job forthis medical company and he says

(53:38):
you know, I want to invest insomething.
I get some money.
I want to invest.
Do you have any ideas?
I said, yeah, I got a speakerI've been working on.
So I meet with all three ofthem and I play it for them and
they're just jaw dropped andthey, they said, okay, we want
to invest.
So I quit my job and I startworking out of the garage um,

(54:01):
making making good money, youknow, working out of my garage
on developing this speaker.
So I worked on it for probablya year and a half.
I bought this lathe that was a21-inch bed over lathe to be
able to create the molds andstuff for building these things.
And I experimented with spunaluminum with a layer of

(54:25):
concrete on the inside, becauseI want to.
You know the goal is I want,first of all, I'm doing toilet
reading in the Encyclopedia ofAudio Engineers from 1948.
And it shows graphs of thefrequency response coming off of
different shapes.

(54:45):
It shows a cylinder, it shows atriangle, it shows a square
rectangle, all these differentshapes and what happens to the
sound because of the shape thatit's coming off of, and one of
them is a sphere.
So it says at the end of thearticle this is HG Olson from

(55:05):
RCA Records writing this, and hesays this experiment shows that
the only true shape tooriginate sound from is a sphere
.
Now, if you think about soundpropagating from a cone of a
speaker, it's trying to foldaround 360 degrees, right, yeah.

(55:28):
And if you have a, if you haveit mounted on a baffle that goes
six inches and off to each side, this, these frequencies are
coming off, hitting the baffle,reflecting out and clashing with
the original frequencies comingfrom the cone, right.
So that made sense to me and Igo, okay, I'm starting with a
sphere.

(55:50):
And then I was reading about,like the types of materials you
know we do, like double MDF,heavy MDF, braced, and all this
to get, because there's so manyforces that are happening when a
cone is going right, that thesurface it's mounted to and the
surrounding surfaces areresonating and all that's doing

(56:13):
is it's, it's, it's like sendingmud into the good sound, okay.
Plus, it's canceling out the,the, the, the driver itself and
all these other problems, right?
So so I go, okay, if I'mstanding on a six inch thick
slab of concrete and you'restanding 10 feet away from me,

(56:36):
if I slap my floor on the ground, my foot on the ground.
You feel it in your feet, okay.
So concrete's not the rightthing, it's still rigid, you
know, and it'll translate thevibration.
So.
But I said if, if we're standingat the beach and I come up and
I slapped my foot down next toyou, three inches away, you

(56:56):
don't feel nothing because oneone grain hits, the next hits,
the next hits, the next, and itgets dissipated.
By the time it's a few grainsaway from the original impact,
right?
So I go?
All right, I'm using sand,which I know Yamo had done
something with sand in the bathwith her speaker years ago and
stuff.
So that's not like an originalidea, kind of obscure but not

(57:20):
original.
So, all right, what kind ofmaterial can I make this sphere
out of?
That would be the strongest,you know, like an egg.
You take an egg and you try tocrack it by by squeezing it,
right, you can't because of theshape makes it automatically
strong, right?
So a sphere is a very strongshape, very rigid and strong.

(57:44):
So I did fiberglass, an outerfiberglass shell with an inner
fiberglass shell.
So I got to make two shellspain in the neck.
And then I put seven-eighthsinch of sand, compacted.
I used multiple differentgrains of sand so that they

(58:05):
would compact tightly and Ivibrate them.
I got this air vibrator thisthing is like radical, you know
and I vibrate the sand into thewalls of this enclosure and let
me tell you what man it is.
I think it's awesome and thesethings just breathe.

(58:28):
You put on a track with a goodcenter image and a band that the
drummer might be back there 20feet and the sax is over there
10 feet back on stage.
You hear everybody from wherethey're playing, from the depth,
and you close your eyes.

(58:49):
You cannot point at thespeakers that's incredible.

I imagine they were heavy, because if you're
using sand and fiberglass, Imean these things must weigh a
ton, right they're like 110pounds a side, yep.

So.
So now I'm thinking to myself.
You know, back to theadjustability thing.
Right Now I need to make astand for this thing where I can
orient my mid range and tweeterto any position.
Right, the woofer, you can kindof move it around, you can
point them up into the middleand you can.
You know, you can move themaround because they're a sphere

(59:24):
on a stand, but the mid rangeand tweeter, you can.
You can back one off, pull oneforward, separate them a lot
from each other, put them rightnext to each other, just really
be able to play with it and seewhat cause and effect is Right.
I don't do much with science, Ijust go cause and effect.
I don't do much with science, Ijust go cause and effect.

(59:47):
So, um, I do this adjustablestand, which I actually ended up
getting a 21 claim patent on.
You know, we, we, we, we filedfor a patent on that and it came
through two years later, which,you know, after like six months
, everybody goes, ah, if youdidn't get it yet, you didn't
get it, but it, it eventuallycame through two years later.
So I take this prototype to theStereophile Show in Manhattan in

(01:00:13):
the fall of 07, october.
It was like 11 in 07.
And we're coming out of nowhere.
No one knows we exist.
I, um, I got a manufacturer tolend me an amp and, um, honestly
, my little 25 watt per channelHarman card and receiver I
bought for my wife for Christmaswhen I worked at sound

(01:00:35):
playground.
That thing is awesome.
I love that thing, so to thisday I still play it.
If I played it for you and go,that's 25, what so?
So I, I show up at the show andand we're there for the weekend
.
It takes over the entire hotel,the grand hyatt, I believe it
was down in, uh, you know, themiddle of manhattan.

(01:00:57):
You know it costs a lot to bethere, and so when I first set
up in there, I I'm like man,this is nothing like I have in
my other rooms.
I've put this in.
It's like this room was covered, covered with corners, lots of
moldings, and corners, corners,corners, corners, corners, and

(01:01:17):
it just blew the image outterrible.
So I slid them around the roomand I put them in a location
that they sounded where they'resupposed to, and it was
inconvenient for people comingin and listening, but it ended
up getting from a lot of themain reviewers in the industry.

(01:01:37):
I won't mention their names,but there's a bunch of them and
it got best sound at the show,best of show, most innovative
product, some of the best sound.
I mean on and on and on.
Wired Magazine calls meimmediately, wants them down on
the west side of Manhattan for aphotograph.
And I'm in this photo studio.

(01:01:59):
It looks something out of amovie, you know, it was huge.
And they the guy pulls the Nikesneakers off of the stand and
puts my speakers up on the thing.
He let me stay.
He was reluctant but I said canI stay?
I'm all the way down here fromConnecticut and, um, he let.
I had my daughter with me.
She was like 12, you know.
And he says, yeah, okay, youknow, but he didn't realize I

(01:02:21):
was going to watch everything hewas doing.
And I did some greatphotographs later when I saw how
he filmed such a thing.
So it just takes off.
It's like a thousand pages deep.
I mean I can't be getting theadvertising I'm getting if you
spend a million dollars, right?
So we're like, oh man, what arewe going to do now?

(01:02:42):
All right, we got to puttogether a manufacturing
facility.
So I buy a CNC machine, fullmachine shop facility over in
Durham you know it's an oldmanufacturing facility split up
in the suites and took that overand now we're off to the races.
So I'm I'm shipping thesethings to.

(01:03:02):
And now we're off to the races.
So I'm shipping these things to.
The first dealer I put on inNashville, new Hampshire.
What I did is I built a mobileshowroom out of an 18-foot Thule
trailer, bought a brand-newThule trailer, did the whole

(01:03:29):
interior up like a car audio guywould, and so I can drive it
around and demo.
I took one trip and I soldinitial pairs on the one trip.
You know, up to boston and umand um, southern new hampshire,
nashua, and um, they want a pair.
And I'm like, okay, now I gottamake these things.
This is hard, you know, thesethings aren't easy to make.
So, so, so meanwhile we'resetting up the manufacturing and
showing them off at the sametime.
So it's all happening in realtime.
And so this dealer in NewHampshire says I'll take a demo

(01:03:54):
pair, but we only sell one totwo pairs of speakers over
$20,000 price point a year.
So he says, don't expect muchbusiness.
I said, all right, you know,whatever he sells the first pair
in two days, the second pair intwo weeks.
This guy sells nine pair innine months and tell everybody

(01:04:15):
what?

Edwin Alvarez (01:04:15):
yeah, I was just gonna say tell everybody what
the price of these were too 26000 a pair.

Dan Herrington (01:04:21):
I put them up Now.
I made the price up the daybefore the show in New York.
So, I should have.
I should have said 39.

So, and this was 2007, which was huge, some of my
money back.
It's a huge sum of money nowfor speakers.

And I'm making these things and when, as fast
as I can build them right, we're.
We're just like all cylindersfire and trying to build these
to perfection.
You know you're up againstChina building the iPhone like
perfect.
You know, yeah, yeah, at theseshows, everything around them is
150 grand a pair and stuff.

(01:04:56):
You know they're sparing noexpense and they've been doing
it a long time.
And I'm coming out of nowhereand you know it's like I'm
creating a serious ruckus, butyou know you still got to pull
this off somehow.
You know, and if you, if youwent over to China to do
business, it was, it was uh, 20%.
In America it's 80%.
So you know, I see why peopleend up doing business in China,

(01:05:20):
unfortunately, you know.

Yeah, it's a sad state that we're in, but it's
also kind of something that wedid to ourselves, because people
love cheap electronics.
And I don't mean cheap ascheaply made, I'm talking about
cheap as in cheaper prices.

Something you can afford to pay for.

Yeah, it's a vicious cycle, it's expensive
and something unique here.

I'll pause in the story of this and say is.
I always thought that.
I always gloated to myself thatcustom, you know, custom.
You know you're looking atsomething and you're going right
, you're building somethingcustom.
I thought that was the hardestrealm.
Manufacturing is really hard.
I give those guys respect.

(01:06:04):
Yeah, to do the same thing overand over perfectly not easy.
So so I I get invited.
Um, dennis had is like the, thegrandfather of tube amplifiers.
He's the one that kind of didthe push to bring them back into
the world, you know, aftertransistors took over.
So he sees them up in NewHampshire and he goes.

(01:06:29):
I want these speakers atConsumer Electronics Show in
Vegas in January.
It was about three weeks away,right.
So I managed to put together apair and get them shipped there.
He moves the $150,000 a pair Iwon't say the name of the
manufacturer off to the side.
You know really high end Danishspeakers and um and he puts my

(01:06:54):
speakers there and he he sendsme a note after the show, says
that was the best show we had in20 years and um and I had all
the big wigs in there going wow,wow, you know I was playing
sweet baby jane, right, the, thethe most played song at an

(01:07:15):
audio show in probably history.
And I I saw the, the head editorof stereo file Magazine,
walking in the hall at the endof the day and I said can I get
you to come in here and hearthis real quick?
And he's like he doesn't wantto be bothered.
He's been, you know, going allday and he's like the man you

(01:07:35):
know and he comes in, he sitsdown.
I play him, sweet Baby Jane.
I said I'm going to play yousomething you've heard a million
times that you've never heard.
What are these?
Where are you located?
You know he wanted to come upto the factory and everything.
That's how blown away he was.
So that's what we got.

(01:07:57):
So we pick up dealers in Moscow,sweden, switzerland, bulgaria,
netherlands, hong Kong, china.
They're signing up on the spotat CES, wow.
And they all want a pair.
So I got to make.
You know I'm ramping up.
I got to make these things,hiring more people trying to
source the goods.
And you know, get this, thesethings, made.

(01:08:17):
It couldn't have been anybetter.
All I had to do is 200 pair,year two, and I was a
millionaire.

I mean it couldn't have been any better.

200 pair and I'm a millionaire.
I did the math, I'm amillionaire, I did the math, you
know.
So we sold 34 pair with noadvertising until about April of
08.
That's only four months afterthe CES show.
And what happens?
The greatest economy crashsince the great depression.

(01:08:47):
High end audio is the lastthing anybody's thinking about.
Yep, and first thing to go,really yeah, and it shut off
like a light switch.

Oh man, that's all.
That's heartbreaking.

Yeah, we lost a half a million bucks and walked
away with our tail between ourlegs and that was the end of it.
Wow, I have two pairs.
I'm looking at them right nowit.

But, wow, I have two pairs.
I'm looking at them right now.
So after that 08 crash andafter everything sort of
plateaued, did you ever considermaybe giving it another shot?

every single person.
So I had yale pay me to comelecture at the school of sound
design about it.
This is probably, I don't know,six years ago or so, and, uh,
it paid pretty good.
I don't want to.
I should call them up see.
You want me to lecture again?
It paid pretty good.
So you know that's what they do.
They do sound that's.

(01:09:45):
You know, this is yale andthey're they're high end, right.
So so I set them up in thereand I talked about, you know, my
career for probably an hour,hour and a quarter, and then I
played them for 45 minutes.
The professor that's been therefor like 38 years comes down
from the back of the room and hegoes what are you doing with
these?
I go well, the economy crashed,you know, blah, blah, blah.

(01:10:08):
He goes you have got to dosomething with this.
And, and you know, again, I'm.
It's back to the same old story.
I'm just, I'm just trying tomake a living and support my
family, and you know, to take ona big transition like that, if
you've got somebody with bigmoney that wants to come in and

(01:10:29):
I, you know, I'd love to do itagain.
Again, I, there's not much Iwould change, you know, I think
I would like to motorize them sothat you can set up a test mic
and some software and they, theytotally time align themselves.
You know, now I do it with afishing pole, um, and a and a
knitting needle, you know whereI find that, you know'll find

(01:10:50):
the.
I'll set that up where your headwould be, behind the chair, you
know, with a mic stand, andthen I'd find the voice coil,
which is where the timingoriginates, and get them all
time aligned.
It does make a difference, noquestion there you go, you know
the more things.

the more things change, the more they stay the
same, because those sameconcepts still apply to this day
.

It's physics right, and that was something
that was on my heart in the lastfew days about when I talked to
you.
It's just like the simplicity.
I don't want any features, Ijust want the simplicity.
You know, and some of the bestsystems I've ever heard are the
simplest ones.
You know, I mean a lot of itwith these speakers has to do

(01:11:36):
with the crossover and you know,ping me up later and I'll send
you some pictures of the designof the crossover, like when I
was developing the crossover forit.
This would apply to car audioall day long, and I'm doing it
on a piece of MDF with sometracer wire and stuff to you

(01:11:57):
know, like flat tracer wire likeyou'd have on a circuit board,
and I'm playing with positioningof the coils and the capacitors
and where they are in relationto each other on the circuit
board.
Huge, huge, huge, huge.
You know, because the fields ofthe coils are reacting with
each other and you know I see alot of talk about it online, but
unless you play with it andexperiment with it, you know,

(01:12:19):
which I know probably a lot ofpeople have, it is everything,
but here was a big one.
So, okay, the wire.
You know you always see allthis stuff about wire, what's
good wire, what's bad wire, youknow, and all this.
So I'm looking when I'mdeveloping this in my bedroom,
remind me and I'll send youpictures of what this bedroom

(01:12:39):
floor looked like.
My wife's away for like a monthand you know mad scientist shit
.
So I'm thinking I want the bestwire that I could possibly have
.
So I I get a hold of like thetop wire manufacturers.
I need samples, I want to playwith your wire.
I got this speaker I'mdeveloping, send them pictures.

(01:13:02):
And then all these people aresending me wires.
And then I read this articlefrom this guy from sweden that
was an engineer.
He wasn't a sound guy oranything, he was an engineer and
he dove into electrically whyand experimented with every kind
of wire you can imagine andanalyzed it and recorded it.

(01:13:23):
So he came up with Teflonjacketed Teflon not pvc, not
other materials, um, but teflonjacketed plenum.
So it's very thin.
You know a plenum wire is whatyou would run up in a ceiling in
case there's a fire.
It's like the minimum amount ofsmoke that would come from the

(01:13:46):
wire if it would burn.
Uh, cat five wire right, yourcomputer cabling.
You know it's twisted pair,it's rejecting noise, it's, it's
right.
So so I I bought some tefloncoated cat five wire and I would
just twist all the negatives,twist all the positives, and I

(01:14:10):
try this wire and it completelyblew my mind.
I could a be it for anybodythat doesn't even know anything
about sound, and they'd have toadmit oh yeah, I hear that the
detail and the imaging,everything changed.
So so I was making my owncables, um, because of that.

So there's actually a guy on the uh
competition circuit that usescat5 wire and he swears by it uh
for his vehicle he's right,he's one of the top winners in
the in the circuit actually heis correct.

But if, if he doesn't know about it being
teflon, see, because capacitanceand inductance of the wire,
right.
Capacitance stores the chargeand then lets it back out right
at a certain interval.
An inductor, you know, aninductor is a coil, you know
what does it do?
Right, it low passes right.

(01:15:09):
So you look at the inductanceand capacitance of the insulator
.
Now, if you could have just rawcopper with no insulator,
that'd be great, right, you know.
And there's engineers and stuffthat are probably going to poke
at me on all this, but I'm justgoing by experiments and what I
came out with, you know,practical experience.

(01:15:32):
So it's so, the Teflon has avery low capacitance, very low
inductance is what I rememberreading 30 years ago.
So don't quote me on any ofthis, but it made sense to me
and it's very thin, right, causeit's plenum, right?
I don't know I would challengeanybody to try it.

(01:15:54):
You might be blown out of yoursocks.
I couldn't believe it.

That's interesting.
It's funny how some of thethings have evolved over the
years, like you were talkingabout earlier about the clarion,
and now, because back in theday, getting back to um, I ask
you guys had a two seat tunescorrect, cause now a two seat

(01:16:20):
tune, like basically the soundsounded good from both the front
seats yeah, that's the hard.

That's the hard thing to do.
Yeah, that's the hard thing todo.

Now there's a company called Riven out there.
That's now.
They developed a processor thatextracts the center image and
you have to have a center imagespeaker.
But that's something new,that's in its.
It's been out for the lastmaybe two or three years, I
believe, been out for the lastmaybe two or three years, I

(01:16:53):
believe.
But, um, you know now what mostpeople tune for is a one seat
tune, because it's it's verydifficult to get a two seat tune
.
So almost everybody, almostevery car that you get into,
only the driver is going to be,you know, enjoying the sweet
spot, so to speak that's thehard part right there.

Yeah, we, we hit it with broder sound of the
honda, though, because we hadthose tools to work with.
Yeah, timing you know, yeah,and you guys were using kick.
You can move the sound allaround yep, yeah.

So yeah, what do you think um like the state of
sound quality now versus, youknow, back in the 90s?
I know that you said you knowyou're not familiar with all the
brands, but I mean, as far youknow and you, you, I know you um
, you, you dip your toes in someof the stuff.
Uh, I'm sure you see it and youfollow some of the, the four,

(01:17:43):
uh, the groups on facebook.
What do you think of the, thecurrent state of sound cue?
What's your opinion on that?

I would be really, really.
First of all, I'm totallyencouraged that it's coming back
to sound quality.
You know, I mean, I don't know,I just I never, I never bought
into just it, it being 100, nowthey're up to what like 168
decibels.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's like it'sso crazy.

(01:18:11):
They took it to the limit.
These guys, yeah, and that I'm.
I respect that because that'sphysics too.
You know, yep, yeah, um, no, Irespect it totally, but it was
never my jam, you know I, youknow I'd sit in there.
In fact, I felt like I blew outmy rear, my right ear, a little
bit one day with this guy witha brown van that came in.
That thing was loud, I think atthat point it was like 158 db.

(01:18:34):
But you know, now they're goingway up there.
Um, but um, I don't know.
To me the, the, the joy of itwas making something.
Broder always said it right, hegoes when it's right, the hair
on my arms stands up.
You know, it's like he's movedby it.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it is it is a.

It is a moving experience, because when I have
somebody sit in my car, forexample, they they're just blown
away.
The people that aren't thataren't even familiar with sound
quality, you know, they're justused to the standard oem system
in their car, or maybe they adda subwoofer.
You know they don't they to thestandard oem system in their car
or maybe they add a subwoofer.
You know, they don't.
They don't really go too far.
A lot of people don't go toofar these days, but I mean that

(01:19:19):
a lot of that has to do with theoem manufacturers have stepped
up their game but you know, it'sstill not quite what a sound
quality enthusiast you knowlikes.
I mean, we're kind of adifferent breed, but um, uh, you
know the uh, the the differencewith a sound quality car.

(01:19:40):
When somebody steps in it, theyknow it when they sit in it,
even if they're not into soundquality yeah, they're just blown
away.
You know, and and you might getthat person to be sort of like
what happened with me and you,where I was just into having
clean sound and then when I gotinto a car with sound quality
and it had an image, I was just,I was hooked, you know totally.

You created a monster, I'm so happy I got you
on the morale too.
I always love morale.
Yeah, I was like morale.

Who the heck is morale?
I never even heard of them andI got.

Morrells Very smooth.

Yeah, they were awesome drivers.
I went to your shop and hadthem installed.
I had an 83 Buick Skylark and Ihad acoustic research 6x9s in
the back and I knew I wantedsomething better in the front
and um, I had um, uh ppi ampsinstalled in the trunk yeah my

(01:20:41):
trunk was useless.
My I couldn't even put a sparetire any longer in the trunk and
um were they the white ones or,before that, the black ones?

they were black the.

The first ones that I bought from you guys were
black yep, I bought the whiteones later on from you guys um,
and then I, and then I went withsound stream reference series,
the blue ones when they came outand um it.
You know, I I still uh, even tothis day.
I feel like buying um a uh, theart series amp from ebay or

(01:21:15):
something and just hanging it upon the wall like a picture,
because they were such beautifulamps, the art series yeah yep
and the lady that created thatart she, she actually passed
away not that long ago.

The artist kidding yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah yeah, it was likeSouthwestern looking or
something.

Yeah, yeah, they were gorgeous amps.

They came out with Sedona, the cheaper line
with Sedona, Yep yep.
You know what amp I liked.
That was kind of a cheaperfeeling amp on the outside.
Mm-hmm, Was the Carver amps.

They probably weren't out that long oh yeah, I
remember they made good homeaudio stuff too.

I did some nice systems with those.
I did this one, a Suzu pickuptruck.
This was for Ayaska.
He won and he was going to theno, I could be wrong on this,
but I think he won the Eastcoast.
Um, I don't remember if it waslong Island or where it was, but
he won the East coast with thistruck that I did for him.

(01:22:20):
And then he rolled it on theway home.
Oh no, total, total rolled it.
And this was unique, though.
I took this Isuzu truck and I, I, I, I did like strips of wood
that were like half inch tall,maybe five, eighths tall, all
over the floor, about every youknow squares of maybe eight inch

(01:22:42):
squares or something, all overthe floor of the truck.
And then I mounted thesubwoofers.
Where I made you, there werefour tents, two under the seat,
two, you know, just ahead of theseat, that breathe to the
outside of the vehicle, so theywere free air.
So you were living inside theenclosure, right, it actually

(01:23:06):
worked really good.
And then I inlaid, I put thewood, the wood strips, there so
I can inlay sand, and then Isealed it in with dynamat, right
, so the sand is stationaryinside these eight-inch square
pockets all over the floor andthe entire truck and then I did

(01:23:29):
like 12-inch pieces of PVC thatstuck down about six inches
under the truck.
And then I took some heatingand air conditioning filters and
created filters so that, youknow, water and different junk
wouldn't get up into the speaker.
And that actually worked reallygood and he was ready to go to

(01:23:50):
the finals and he rolled histruck.
Oh, that's heartbreaking.

Man.

Yeah, a lot of guys use Infinite Baffle.

Oh, the Carver amps.
Yeah, I remember those and Inever heard one or laid my hands
on one, but I remember seeingthem in the magazines and I know
that, carver, I think they'restill around.
I know that, um, back in theday, uh, this place that I used
to dj at had carver amps fortheir pa system and, uh, I know

(01:24:20):
that they used to have carveramps for for uh, for pa setups
and stuff like that.
I used to see them at differentmusic stores but I haven't seen.
I haven't seen any carver ampsaround for car audio in a long
time that's a tough business.

They probably stuck their toe, they probably
tucked their, you know, puttheir toe in the water and
realized that we're not going tomake any money here, and they
pulled out, you know, just likea lot of other brands did
through the years yeah um, butyou know who.
But back to your question there.
Um, I haven't really sat in ahigh quality audio system in a
car and it could be like 30years, wow, 62, 32, um, now

(01:25:02):
let's say 25 years, right, yeah,and, and I, it was this.
We were at this party a coupleweeks weeks ago in North
Carolina and everybody wasbragging about this system, this
this rich guy's kid had, andand I'm like, yeah, let me check
it out.
Yeah, I was in the car audioheavy man for a long time.
Let me check it out.
I mean, and we get in the carand he plays this thing and and

(01:25:26):
he's like looking over at melike, yeah, man, what do you
think?

I like looking over at me, like yeah man, what
do you think I'm?
Like?
Did it blow your way?

all it was was banging outside the truck and it
was just like it was zero soundquality and he loved it.
Yeah, the whole thing mighthave changed.
You know, maybe people don'tcare, but I know, I know the
older generation does and Ithink if you could turn the
younger generation onto it theywould be like, wow, this is

(01:25:57):
awesome.

Yeah, that's that's the thing.
That's the thing.
That's why we do these gettogethers.
We we have a lot of gettogethers, believe it or not.
There's some that are out inyour neck of the woods too
there's.
There's people out there.
We have competitions and stufflike that out there really yeah,
yeah next.

Uh, I'd find that a blast to go to something
like that.
You gotta just let me know whenthey're taking place.

I'll yeah once we're done with the podcast.
Let me know exactly like whatarea you're in and I'll let you
know when they're having thosemeets or there's comp or those
competitions.
That way you can hear what, uh,you know what a real sound
quality car is these days,because I think you'd be
pleasantly, uh, surprised andyou'd be impressed because the,
the technology yeah hasdefinitely you would have to

(01:26:41):
think it would evolve.

Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah it's evolved.

You know the techniques keeping people in
that triangle, that magic, thatmagic triangle you know is is
obviously.
You know, physics is physicsand the the more that you can
get that triangle, even with thelistener, of course.
But dsp these days have evolvedbig time, you know.
And, like I said, with thatribbon I've heard nothing.

(01:27:06):
But I haven't had a chance tosit in a car with the ribbon
processor, but I hear nothingbut good, good things about it.
I hope to listen to our car, acar with the Riven processor,
but I hear nothing but goodthings about it.
I hope to listen to a car nextseason with a Riven.
One of my friends picked up theRiven processor and supposedly
it's like the cat's meow.

So then why not?
I mean, clarion did that backin 96 or whatever, right, yeah,
that would have been the firsttouchdown into that realm and it
would have to be great.

now you know quiet and you know everything
you care about so what adviceyou have for for somebody who,
uh, like a do-it-yourself or oreven a pro now that you've been,
you know you're pretty much aveteran of the industry and you
know a former owner and formerspeaker builder what type of

(01:27:57):
type of advice do you got for anup-and-comer or a seasoned pro?

is no, know the driver and understand what it
needs to live in for air volumeRight and and the surfaces
around it.
Like you know, residents willkill any good system.
You know, you have to, you haveto, you know, go to extra
lengths to make your cardeadened to sound so that your

(01:28:25):
car is not becoming a speakeryou know, cause.
That's, that's the most commonthing.
I mean, that's huge.
And then phase balanceplacement.
So I I always like to try to Icreate um prototypes to play
with, right, so maybe put aspeaker in an enclosure of the

(01:28:46):
size that you know you canachieve in a particular location
you're going to work on and andand just mock it up.
Mock it up and play with it.
Angles, um, you knowpositioning, you know, and you
have to get center balance.
You know if you got a tweeter,you know six inches away from

(01:29:09):
your head, you know, forgetabout trying to go 30 feet deep
with an image.
So you're always, you're alwaysthinking about trying to get
this stuff away from you.
That's what I mean.
I'm going back 30 years ofthinking here.
But you know, get it away fromyou and and you know phase
balance placement and and setyourself up with tools to

(01:29:33):
experiment.
There's a guy that used to workfor me.
I don't know if you rememberhim.
His name's Chris.
I'll leave his last name out.

Was he the one with Integra?
He was into modding Japanesecars, if I remember correctly.
Or was he the one with theGrand National?

He's one of the most talented people I've ever
met in my life.
He went to work for someplaceout of New York City, somewhere
around New York City maybe andthis shop took it to a whole
other level.
They'll scan the kick panelwith a device that translates
device that translates it to thecnc and it yeah, the 3d, 3d
scanners yep, oh man, they.

(01:30:18):
They took things to a wholenother level and and chris is
extraordinarily talented theytook it to a level.
You know I'm a grandfather inthis business.
You know they took it, theytook the baton and went to a
whole other level that's great.
Now, do those cars sound good?
I imagine they do.
Yeah, yep, um, but andsimplicity to me.

(01:30:41):
I'll take a to this day.
You know you have to convinceme if you just prove it to me,
but to this day I'll take a pairof killer tube amps,
single-ended tube amps, on myspeakers, and it just becomes so
wide and natural and flowingand bloomy and oh, it's just

(01:31:03):
like.
It's like you're you put on alive concert.
You turn the lights out, thehair is up on your arms and you
think you're there.

Yeah, I mean it just convincing.

Yeah, so I'm a big, simple and effective, you
know.
Yeah, keep it simple, justadding a bunch of gear and a
thing Everything you add takesaway something.

Yep, yep.
Every time you add something tothe chain, there's going to be
a, a sonic, even if it'ssomething imperceptible, there's
going to be something.
When you, even if it'ssomething imperceptible, there's
going to be something.
When you add things to thechain, you're just adding more,
more and more things that couldgo wrong, more and more things
that could add to noise, moreand more things that that could
deteriorate also or take awayfrom the experience.

(01:31:45):
So it's usually good to keep itsimple.
I try to keep it simple.

I try to keep it simple myself so simple and um,
and make your speaker locationsgreat, you know.

So so, ray you, you told me you reconnected with
Ray recently, right?

Yeah, yeah.
So okay, this is a.
This is a wild thing.
So I called Ray.
Haven't talked to him inprobably 15 years and I called
him up out out of nowhere.
This is like two weeks ago,buddy.
I miss you, man.
What is up, how are you, youknow?
And uh, I now follow his wifeon facebook.
She posts all the time so, um.

(01:32:24):
So she says, you know, I'mtalking to him and his wife she
goes.
Ray's thinking of selling hiscar.
I go go.
What kind of shape is it in?
It's got 45,000 miles, wow, andit's in mint condition.
He kept that thing, perfect,wow.
He drove it once a month for aSunday drive and that was it.

(01:32:45):
That's incredible, andapparently the system is just
like I left it.

Wow.

So I got to get a car for my youngest daughter
and I, you know, I can pictureher driving around and then I
ask a winner Wow, that's morethan she bargained for.

Wouldn't that be great if the car came back home
to Papa right Full circle?

That's what I told him.
Keep it in the family.
Buddy, I'm going to Connecticut.
I'm going to be up inConnecticut.
I love to see you.
Actually, this is a great thingyeah, when are you coming to?
Connecticut, um like the 14th,15th, and I've got a wedding up
um near Newport, okay, and thenmy, my wife's driving back and

(01:33:27):
I'm staying there, I'm doing uh,I eventually got into pro sound
.
Along the way I did a lot ofchurches and stuff and then I
got into doing construction ofall the churches.
I'll do the and I make therooms acoustically correct,
right yeah, that's a wholenother animal.

I dabbled into that too did you really?

yeah yeah, big, big animal.
It's a good one, though I youknow there's there's techniques
on how to get it done right.
So so I've got a church job todo while I'm up there, but I'm
going to be up there a wholeweek.
I've got like two, three daysat a church.
Then I've got to hang out untilthey have their Sunday service
for like two, three days.
I'd love to see you in thattime frame.
That'd be great.

You got to invite Ray.
Tell Ray to bring his car thatthat way we can, we can, we can
compare old versus new tech.
Now ray could sit in my car.

I could sit in his car if at all possible, but
that'd be great.
I'd love to have that would befun dinner or lunch yeah yeah,
that'd be great where do youlive?

in connecticut now ******************** I don't
want to say exactly where Ilive because we're just going to
be on the interwebs, but********************undefined,
yeah, yeah, I live down by

Yeah.

So I live near that area.

He lives in ********, so that's not that far
.

Okay.
*********** away from me.

There you go.

Yeah, this is going to work out great you go
yeah, this is gonna work outgreat, this will be fun, let's
do this.
Yeah, I'd love to see broder.
I haven't talked to him, I meansince the 90s.
So basically when I, um, afterI left cartoons, I, I, I, I had
my car all prepared and I wentup there and alan was still
obviously one of the owners, butthey were kind of I think,

(01:35:09):
didn't boomer mcleod kind of,did they merge with boomer?

so, yeah, the boomer mcleod thing was they
were gonna, they were gonna tryto take kind of like um, true
value and ace hardware did.
They took all the littlehardware stores in town, yep,
and they gave them a name, theygave them advertising.
It was a good concept, but Ithink the timing was wrong.
Yeah, yeah, in the industry.

Well, that that was the.
You know, that was the thingabout that time that around the
2000s, you know, the dealershipstarted making better, better uh
systems, oem systems, and thenthey made it harder and harder
to uh integrate a system into anoem.
You know they, they nearly madeit almost nearly impossible, you
know.
But where there's a willthere's a way, because now

(01:35:56):
there's a lot of companies thatmake hardware to integrate into
the newer systems.
Because the newer systems arereally complex, the radio is
tied into everything theseatbelt, the tire pressure
monitor system.
I mean you literally cannoteven remove the, the, the radio,
out of a car now, becauseliterally it's, it's the brain.

In the late 90s the honda came through with that
.
Everything was the computer,was like in the radio.
Yeah right, you couldn't takeit out.

Oh yeah yeah, it's, it's real bad now.
So, um, what was I saying?
I forgot what I was saying.

(01:36:44):
What were we talking about?
A few seconds ago, before theintegration?
And I had the box that wasinspired by Ray's car, and you
and I had my SoundStream ampsand I had a.
You remember, back then therecipe for winning was JL Audio,
ppi and MB Court.
That was basically the recipeto win, but instead of PPI, I

(01:37:08):
went with SoundStream and my carwas winning left and right.
You know, I take a fifth hereand there, a fourth there and
there.
I got invited to nationals andI said, man, I want to go.
You know, dan was myinspiration for all this.
I want to go show my system.
And it had been a few years Ithink this was like the late 90s
and I went up there and Italked to Alan and Alan said

(01:37:30):
that you were gone and I waslike, oh no, like yeah, he's no
longer, you know, with thecompany, and so you had stepped
out of out of cartoons Right Atthat point in the late 90s.

I lost a taste on the way back from the world
finals.
It just.
I just felt like you know, I'vepursued this for 15 years.
I just I'm going to dosomething else.
It wasn't conscious, it wasjust.
You know, you got to be drivenby something, right?

Yeah.

But I do.
I do because I've had how manyyears to think about it 25 years
, 27 years to think about it.
I do would love to do one moresystem before I get too old to
go under a dash yeah, you saidthat.

You said that.
You said you'd love to do onemore system yeah, I want to do
one more, so I know exactly whatI would do so anybody that's
out there on internet land, ifyou guys want award-winning
knowledge, you know this guy'sthis, this is your man and, uh,
the only stipulation is you.
You got to let him take histime, leave the car with them
and you're out in south carolina.

You said I'm in uh virginia virginia what?
I messed that up twice.
That's okay, that's okay.
I tried to find the middle ofthe country.
So you know, it's like thewinters are shaved off, they're
not bad, and the summers are notbad.
So it's kind of right in themiddle, right where I want it,
yeah.
But here's, here's the rules.
If I do another car, you dropit off, you leave me alone,

(01:38:57):
you're just paying for it, andand I don't care what you want,
I don't, you know.
You know, like I don't, I don'twant any of the social land,
and you just leave me alone andlet me be like this mad
scientist and let me do it, andthen you get it back, and if you
don't like it, I guess I giveyou my house or whatever.

No, I think I've seen your work, I've seen your
madness, because I know you'rekind of like one of those people
that just think outside the box.
You don't do things like youknow the cookie cutter or you
know everything's like whatevery other installer does.
You kind of think outside thebox and experiment and it always
comes together and it alwayssounds great, because every car
that I know, when you didBroder's truck, it sounded great

(01:39:41):
.
I remember the Suzu you weretalking about.
I remember.
You know, I remember all thecars.
We did a bunch of cars.
I mean I heard so many goodcars come out of cartoons.
It was great.
No-transcript around the shopwasn't even getting paid and I

(01:40:23):
was still happy.
Those were the days, you knowno, that's it.

yeah, that's it.
No, it's an obsession, it's agreat obsession.
It's fun because, likeinstallers, like I would hire an
installer in any industrybecause he has dealt with so
many different thingsWoodworking, fiberglass,
upholstery, sound deadening,wiring, electronics.
I mean there's so many realmsinvolved in car audio.

(01:40:48):
It's a unique group of peopletotally and a lot of respect for
it because it's it's a hardgame, man oh yeah, it's not easy
you know, and on top of that,you got to please the customers.

You know, at the end of the day, you got
customers to think about and atthe same time, you're trying to
make a profit.
You know so.
But yeah, it was great.
In the 90s were probably, Iwould say, the golden era of car
audio.
You, that's what we're tryingto do now.
We're trying to bring thatgolden era back.
I think we're kind of.
You know, we might be in thebronze stage, I don't know if
we're quite at the golden stage,but we're bringing it back.

(01:41:22):
I got people like you to thank.
You know, like you said, you'rethe grandfather of that era and
I mean it's just great, this ofthat era, and I mean it's just
great.
But, dan, I think we're gonnawrap it up.
Uh, don't hang up.
I'm gonna wrap up this, uh,this podcast.
I want everybody to say thankyou to dan.
All right, dan, hang on onesecond, okay, buddy.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From Car Tunes II to World Champion: Dan Herrington's Audio Journey

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

All Episodes

From Car Tunes II to World Champion: Dan Herrington's Audio Journey

Stuff You Should Know